Services

The ISWR of Thermi-Thessaloniki is certified with an ISO 9001:2015 (Scope statement of certification: Implementation of laboratory methods for soil, water, plant tissues analysis, Development and support of recearch projects and related software packages).

The institute can perform large scale campaigns/surveys for collecting disturbed or undisturbed soil samples, water and plant tissue samples. The sampling positions are georeferenced using GPS. The samples are processed depending on the requirements (air drying, oven drying, sieving, grinding, packaging, fridge conservation etc). The institute also has 2 vehicles (1 Land Rover Discovery-2 4x4 and 1 Ford Escort Caravan) to support long-distance sampling surveys.The ISWR of Thermi-Thessaloniki together with the other departments of ISWR and HAO-DEMETER can perform national campaigns covering the whole coverage of Greece while it can support international expeditions of relevant subjects.

​Soil mapping, soil databases, GIS and Remote Sensing

​Software development - Environmental modelling

The institute has developed complete soil maps of areas of high agricultural importance in Northern Greece, while it continuously performs complete analyses of soil/water samples with geospatial identification with an annual rate of approximately 8000 samples/year. Apart from soil/water samples, the Institute also performs complete analysis of plant tissues for nutrients’ deficiency quantification. Based on the aforementioned activities, ISWR has already the larger part of soil and fertility geospatial information in Greece (total coverage of approximately 200,000 ha, with spatial resolution at field scale), which is continuously updated and/or spatially expanded. The soil maps and the soil databases are used by the experts of the institute for:

Soil mapping is also combined with remote sensing techologies and precision agriculture techniques.The institute provides full support to innovative farms. An example case is the following (pdf).

The institute has already developed two special software packages of non-commercial use, which can identify and quantify nutrient deficiencies in soils and plant tissues of various crops and another one software for assessing irrigation requirements. The packages provide complete guidelines for optimum fertilization and irrigation rates at field scale, which are used by the farmers. The packages have also been incorporated in soil geospatial platforms (pdf or www.geospatialworld.net/article/geospatial-solution-for-smart-farming-in-greece) and have also been linked with messaging bots which provide direct information to the farmers using social platforms (e.g. Skype, facebook, etc). Some examples are the following:

​​The research staff has also a long experience in the use of other state-of-the-art environmental models such as: GLEAMS (water, nutrient and sediment balance at field scale), Arc-SWAT (water, nutrient and sediment balance at basin scale with GIS), LOS (analysis of intrinsic vulnerability of agricultural lands to water and nitrogen losses with GIS), SimaPro (Life Cycle Assessment analysis for crop production), INVEST (Analysis of Ecosystem Services provided by agricultural lands)

​Design and experimentation of natural systems for sludge-sewage treatment

The institute is specialized in the design of natural systems for sewage-sludge treatment. It has its own experimental pilot system of 4 ha coverage (E22.835981, N40.654024) from 1996, with stabilization ponds and constructed wetlands, as well as, experimental fields (sugar beets) and greenhouse plants (tomatoes and zerberas) in order to reuse the treated water for irrigation. The pilot system was one of the first of its kind in Greece and set the basis for research and design of new ones for sewage treatment in villages of Greece. Some examples are the following: